Publishing Your Research
Holly Rushmeier
Jaime Teevan
Publishing Your Research
Holly Rushmeier
The
Publishing
Process
Goal of Publishing
• Benefits
– Advance the state of the art
– Public evidence of your abilities
• Quality v. quantity
– Quality! Quantity varies by area
– Citations matter as career progresses
• How to generate citations
– High quality work
– Highly visible outlets
Avenues for Publication
• Primary outlets
– Conference Papers
– Journal Papers
• Additional
– Workshop Abstracts
– Doctoral consortium Abstracts/Posters
– Conference/Workshop Posters
• Other outlets
– Software, patents, books, data repositories
– Social media: blogs, Twitter, YouTube
Focus: Conferences
• Conference status is different in CS
– Primary outlet for CS (selective)
– Place to meet for other disciplines (not
selective)
• Identifying top-tier conferences
– Process
– Acceptance rate/citations
– Sponsoring organizations
Conference Process
• Uniform submission date
– May have separate abstract deadline
• Program committee
– May be hierarchical, may have noncommittee reviewers
• Decisions
– May be two-pass
• Details vary by area and year
– Read the CFP carefully!!!
SIGGRAPH2013 Example Timeline
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pre-deadline: fill out forms Jan 17
Deadline: MD5 for all content Jan 18
Upload deadline: Jan 19
Committee assignments: ~ Jan 23
Tertiary assignments: ~Jan 30
Reviews available: Mar 11
Rebuttals due: Mar 14
Committee meeting: Mar 20-23
Preliminary decisions: Mar 27
Revisions due: Apr 12
Final Decisions: Apr 9
Publication date: July 7
Presentations: July 21-25
Conference Ethics
• No dual submissions
– When in doubt if submissions will be
perceived as “dual” ASK
• Commitment to present
– This is a serious financial commitment
Journal Process
• No fixed deadlines
– Have more space and time
– No travel or registration expenses
– Can be hard to finish without a deadline
– Review cycle can be slower
Journal Metrics
• Popular: ISI Journal Impact Factor
• Used across all disciplines, computed
by a company
The journal impact factor for year
N is the total number of citations
in year N to articles published in
years N-1 and N-2 divided by the
number of articles in N-1 and N-2.
H-factors
H factor for individuals:
“A scientist has index h if h of his/her N papers
have at least h citations each, and the other
(N-h) papers have no more than h citations
each.” J.E. Hirsch
H5-index for publications:
“h5-index is the h-index for articles published
in the last 5 complete years. It is the largest
number h such that h articles published in
2008-2012 have at least h citations each”
Google Scholar
Journal Process
• Outcomes
– Accept
rare on first submission
– Minor revision
may be “probably accept”
– Major revision
may have one iteration before reject
– Reject
may differentiate between “resubmit as
new” and “hopeless”
Review Process
• Single-blind, double-blind, etc.
• Reviewer selection
– Drawn from citations, contacts, lit search
– Uses keywords or categories (beware of
choosing too broadly)
– Experts in the field
– No conflict of interests
• Meta-review
What Reviewers Look For
• Clear contribution
• Solid evidence
Ethics in Reviewing
• Integrity, objectivity, accountability
– Cannot reject a paper because
• You are writing a paper on the same subject
• You do not like the author
• Confidentiality
– Single blind, double blind reviews
– The material in the paper is not publically available, so
you cannot use ideas from it
• Conflicts of interest with people who
–
–
–
–
–
Work in the same place (never)
Was your advisor (never)
Have written papers together (recently)
Have a financial interest
Double blind review makes things harder, but when in
doubt check with program chair
Considerations in Reviewing
• Reasons, not binary decision, matter
– The clarity and validity of the reasons you
give for accept or reject matter
• You are making an impression
– The person who assigned you the review
will form an opinion of your ability and
maturity from your review
• Get credit for your work
– if assigned as a sub-reviewer, ask that you
be acknowledged by the event or journal
Publishing Your Research
The
Writing
Process
Jaime Teevan
Components of a Paper
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Title and abstract
Authors
Introduction
Related Work
Methodology
Findings
Conclusion
Title and Abstract
• First impression of your paper
– Used to decide to read or review it
– Include terms for searching and scanning
• Should be a clear, complete summary
– Include motivation, findings
– Could substitute for reading the paper
• Avoid acronyms, citations, formatting
Authors
• Be explicit and generous
• Author ordering
– By contribution or convention
– Importance of position
• Author responsibilities
– Contributed to the work
– Verified the work
– Willing and able to present
Successful Co-Authorship
• Externalize thinking
– Get your ideas onto paper
– Share outlines and drafts
• Be respectful of time
– Create a schedule
– Share it
– Keep to it
• Speak up
Introduction
• Tell your story
– Story ≠ what you did
• Be concrete, provide examples
• Do not include cute but
unnecessary detail
– Create “dead kittens” file
• End with a description
of paper structure
Related Work
• Opportunity to highlight contribution
– Describe existing research
– Relate your research to it
• Build from versus take down
– Reviewers drawn from related authors
– Avoid being defensive
• Writing the Related Work section
– Be concise, focus on key papers
– Do not refer to papers as numbers [2]
Methodology
• Goal: Allow an informed expert to
reproduce your research
• Describe the exact approach taken
• Acknowledge limitations
– Explain why they exist
– Frame them as positive when possible
Findings
• Clearly explain what you observed
• Pull content out of text when possible
– Avoid paragraphs of numbers
– Tables and figures should stand alone
• Describe figures, tables, quotations
– Do not assume reader is looking at them
while reading the text
• Help the reader interpret the findings
Components of a Paper
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Title and abstract
Authors
Introduction
Related Work
Methodology
Findings
Conclusion
Submitting Your Paper
• Create a finished paper
– Ensure proper layout
– Copyedit
• Anonymize appropriately
• Submit on time
– Usually can submit early and modify
• Read the CFP carefully
– Ask the PC Chair if you have questions
Author Responsibilities
• Do NOT plagiarize
– Obtain permission for use of material
– Cite and acknowledge work
– Be explicit about reuse of previous work
• No dual submissions
• Support the reviewing process
– Submit work you are proud of
– Respond to the reviews you receive
– Provide thoughtful reviews
Dealing with Reviews
• Separate out the emotional response
– Write a rebuttal or make edits later
• Understand the reviews
– Identify important issues
– Get to the root cause of complaints
– Issues you already address were unclear
• Respond to the reviews
– Reviewers will see the paper again
Dealing with Rejection
• Great papers sometimes get rejected
– There is variation and error in process
– New or bridge topics particularly at risk
• Keep trying
– Good target: Three submissions
• Consider a venue change
– Match content to the best audience
• Address reviewer comments
Publishing Your Research
• Prepare the camera-ready version
– Goal is a strong paper, not just an
accepted paper
– Address reviewer comments
• Share the paper with others
– Link to it, blog about it, Tweet about it
– Present the work
– Leave the details in the paper
Resources
• Paper writing advice
– First EuroSys Authoring workshop
• Presentations:
http://cs.kuleuven.ac.be/conference/EuroSys2006/workshop.html
– An Evaluation of the Ninth SOSP Submissions or How (and How
Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper (Levin & Redell)
• http://john.regehr.org/reading_list/levin_sosp.html
– Writing Technical Articles (Columbia CS Department)
• http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-style.html
– The Elements of Style (Strunk & White)
• ACM Policy
– Plagiarism
• http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/plagiarism_policy
• Note in particular the definition of “self-plagiarism”
– Making your paper public
• ACM Author-izer service (with interesting FAQ)
• http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service
Share Your Feedback
holly.rushmeier@yale.edu
Find me at the Yale booth!
teevan@microsoft.com
Find me at the Microsoft booth!
http://alturl.com/z4gp9